WALNUT FAMILY 
Flowers.—May, when leaves are half grown; moneecious. The 
catkins of staminate flowers appear in the autumn as short cone- 
like buds, slightly hairy, solitary or in pairs ; when mature are three 
to five inches long. The perianth, subtended by an acute triangu- 
lar bract, coated with tomentum, is six-lobed; lobes imbricate, 
nearly orbicular. Stamens twenty to thirty, arranged in several 
rows, with purple anthers surmounted by slightly lobed connectives. 
Pistillate flowers are borne in a two to five-flowered spike, ovate, 
pointed, maturing later than the staminate. The bract and bract- 
lets which form the outer covering of the flower are green and hairy 
above, covered with pale hairs beneath, sometimes cut into a 
laciniate border, sometimes undivided, sometimes greatly reduced. 
Calyx four-lobed ; lobes imbricate, acute, light green, hairy. Styles 
two; stigmas recurved, yellow green, tinged with red. Ovary in- 
ferior, ovule solitary. 
Fruit.—Nut inclosed in an indehiscent involucre, making a kind 
of dry drupe, solitary or in pairs, globose or slightly pyriform, yel- 
low green, roughly dotted, one and a half to two inches in diameter. 
The nut is oval or oblong, slightly flattened, without sutural ridges, 
one and a quarter to one anda half inches in length, dark brown, 
four-celled at top and bottom. Kernel sweet and edible. Cotyle- 
dons deeply lobed. 
The Black Walnut growing alone is one of the grandest 
and most massive trees of our flora. Given a rich soil and 
ample space, “it equals in the boldness of its ramifications 
and the amplitude of its head the best specimens of the oak 
or chestnut.” Its lower branches often sweep the ground, 
while its upper tower sixty or seventy feet into theair. Then, 
too, its plumy yellow green foliage, tufted at the end of the 
spray, long-petioled and narrow-leaved, catches and throws 
the sunlight and makes of its very shade a golden glow. 
This is the free creature protected by man. In the forest 
living under the law of competition it becomes entirely dif- 
ferent. There, the trunk rises straight as a column forty, 
fifty, or sixty feet, without the suggestion of a branch, and 
finally puts forth a narrow round-topped somewhat rigid 
head, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are. 
A single Black Walnut will lighten a dense foliage mass 
wonderfully and has great value in a landscape for that rea- 
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